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More "Obtuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leaving the stud in position; if on the other hand the point is too prolonged, rough and sharp, the stud will probably be pulled off again. It will thus be perceptible that the best shape will be rather obtuse but very smooth. When the stud is in position and the glue setting or chilling, an additional pressure with a small rod of wood or hard material will drive the glue out from the edges and the work may be left ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... useful it may be, it is not a pleasant appendage to a saddle, and must give cruel wounds to the rider if he is thrown forward. There is also a cantle behind, higher than any saddle cantle I have seen, and between these two the seat of the saddle slopes down before and behind, forming an obtuse angle between the slopes, which obtuse angle you sit on! When in the saddle you feel possibly like Mazeppa did on the wild horse, safe not to fall off, but very uncomfortable and helpless. The stirrups—but no, never mind them or any other part of the saddle, ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... you want?" Arthur interrupted. He was standing with his hand upon the door, glancing furtively from one to the other like a trapped animal. But James was too obtuse and Julia too angry ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... made him shrink from appearing in any way to condescend, to patronize, to forgive, where perhaps he needed rather to be forgiven. A strange awkwardness had come over him. He felt himself suddenly to be beyond his depth. How unpardonably blunt and masculinely obtuse he had been in dealing with this beautiful and tender thing, which God had once, for a short time, intrusted to his keeping! How cruel and wooden that moral code of his by which he had relentlessly judged her, and often found her wanting! What an effort ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... looms up from that high bank at the end of the lane. That bough which projects so far over the rippling surface, making a horizontal bend, like that of a man's arm, and then shooting up several yards at an obtuse angle, terminating in a mass of luxuriant foliage, was my favorite seat, when fishing, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... of this new position was at right angles with my original line, and it took the shape of an obtuse angle, with my three batteries at the apex. Davis, and Carlin of his division, endeavored to rally their men here on my right, but their efforts were practically unavailing,—though the calm and cool appearance of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... blackish, obtuse at the smaller end, and rounded at the other; one side near the beaks is angular. Two varieties are noticed by Lister. It inhabits the European, American, and Indian seas, adhering to fuci and zoophytes; is six or seven inches ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... great facility, and spread it in a wonderful manner. To produce it they take two pieces of dry soft wood, one is a stick about eight or nine inches long, the other piece is flat: The stick they shape into an obtuse point at one end, and pressing it upon the other, turn it nimbly by holding it between both their hands as we do a chocolate mill, often shifting their hands up, and then moving them down upon it, to increase the pressure as much as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... hypotheses he does not mean baseless assumptions—"mere theories—"but things self-evident and "obvious to all;"[540] as for example, the postulates and definitions of Geometry. "After laying down hypotheses of the odd and even, and three kinds of angles [right, acute, and obtuse], and figures [as the triangle, square, circle, and the like], he proceeds on them as known, and gives no further reason about them, and reasons downward from these principles,"[541] affirming certain judgments ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and if you were not obtuse you would see it. But you don't see and you don't feel, or you would never have tried to make any one care for you for whom you did not care a bit. But I won't care for you, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... why did he not write out his thoughts. For what, he asked her, with careful scorn. To compete with phrasemongers, incapable of thinking consecutively for sixty seconds? To submit himself to the criticisms of an obtuse middle class which entrusted its morality to policemen and ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... of each tooth, E, to its arm, D, by means of a round tenon arranged at an obtuse angle with the axis of the tooth, and going into the arm, the same being substantially as and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... the angles were turned away from each other the legs of the angles in the two figures compared were brought into closer relation, so that in 2b, for instance, the average is even higher than in 2a. Similarly the average in 3b, an obtuse angle, is higher than in 3a. The notes show that in such cases the contrasted angles tended to close up and coalesce into a single figure with a continuous boundary. "The ends (2b) came together and formed a diamond." ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... the most obtuse vanity could ever have induced Bozzy to publish all this. 'Curiosity,' he declares in the preface, 'is the most prevalent of all our passions, and the curiosity for reading letters is the most prevalent of all kinds of curiosity. ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... always distinguishing the Kopet-dog nuts in the jsp. turcomanica Popof; difference between them being certainly esctant. The number of leaflets of the J. fallasc amounts to 2-4, they are rounder and more obtuse, the shell of the nut is thicker and also rounder and smaller. The number of J. regia leaflets is 3-5, they are narrower and more pointed (lance shaped), the nuts more elongated, larger and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... think we actually see the real shapes. But, in fact, as we all have to learn if we try to draw, a given thing looks different in shape from every different point of view. If our table is 'really' rectangular, it will look, from almost all points of view, as if it had two acute angles and two obtuse angles. If opposite sides are parallel, they will look as if they converged to a point away from the spectator; if they are of equal length, they will look as if the nearer side were longer. All these things are not commonly ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... Limestone. It presents in the cross section the same radiated structure as the Turbinolia fungites, and nearly the same furrowed appearance in the longitudinal one; but, seen in the larger specimens, we find that it was a branched coral, with obtuse forky boughs, in each of which, it is probable, from their general structure, there lived a single polype. It may have been the resemblance which these bear, when seen in detached branches, to the older Caryophyllia, taken ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... down the slope—for of course they were not allowed to lie down while in the stocks, this being too comfortable a position. Upon studying the question he found that in this way much more ease was experienced owing to the more obtuse angle thus formed by the body and the legs. This did not suit him and he issued further orders that in future all prisoners in the stocks should be obliged to sit facing uphill, and that they should not be allowed to hold on to the stocks in order to maintain themselves in this ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... of initiates, adepts in esoteric lore, known to themselves but not to the world, who have had in their keeping, through the centuries, the high truths which they permit to be dimly adumbrated in the popular faiths, but which the rest of the race are too obtuse, even yet, to grasp save in an imperfect and limited degree. These hidden sages, it would seem, look upon our eager aspiring humanity much like the patient masters of an idiot school, watching it go on forever seeking without finding, while they sit in seclusion keeping the keys ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... they do that for? Because the streets are so muddy?" inquired an obtuse young woman. But nobody volunteered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... escapes and experiences, that indomitable man of science still ranges, like a mad philosopher, far and wide over the archipelago in pursuit of "booterflies ant ozer specimens of zee insect vorld." It is observed, however, even by the most obtuse among his friends, that whereas in former times the professor's nights were centrifugal they have now become centripetal—the Keeling Islands being the great centre towards which he flies. Verkimier is, and probably will always be, a subject of wonder and of profound speculation ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... unimpressionable[obs3], unimpressible[obs3]; passionless, spiritless, heartless, soulless; unfeeling, unmoral. apathetic; leuco-|, phlegmatic; dull, frigid; cold blooded, cold hearted; cold as charity; flat, maudlin, obtuse, inert, supine, sluggish, torpid, torpedinous[obs3], torporific[obs3]; sleepy &c. (inactive) 683; languid, half-hearted, tame; numbed; comatose; anaesthetic &c. 376; stupefied, chloroformed, drugged, stoned; palsy-stricken. indifferent, lukewarm; careless, mindless, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... not only from their weapons, but the scars with which many of them were marked, and some of which appeared to be the remains of very considerable wounds, made with stones, bludgeons, or some other obtuse weapon: By these scars also they appear to be no inconsiderable proficients in surgery, of which indeed we happened to have more direct evidence. One of our seamen, when he was on shore, run a large splinter into his foot, and the surgeon being on board, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... misnamed," Aunt Abigail remarked one day, "this is the spot. Dolittle Cottage. Do-little Cottage," she repeated, with an emphasis calculated to make her meaning apparent to the most obtuse. "In the course of a few weeks we have become a preparatory school and an orphan asylum." She looked significantly at Peggy who sat on the steps, feeding the speckled chicken from a spoon. "And our last development is a theatrical agency. Well, I can't say that ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... impossible to feel amiable when passing through these desolating scenes, where nature, originally so beautiful, has been defaced, and the people, instead of deriving pleasure from natural beauties, are obtuse to all the surroundings, which, according to educated taste, would ensure appreciation. I felt inclined to upset the donkeys, capture their proprietors, and . . . I could not have hung them upon the trees that they had defaced, for no bough had been left that ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... lime-burner, an obtuse, middle-aged clown in Ethan Brand by Nathaniel Hawthorne. When he finds the suicide's skeleton in the kiln, the heart whole within the ribs, he congratulates himself that "his kiln is half a bushel richer for ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... he was made to seem morally obtuse, cut Douglas to the quick. Even upon his tough constitution this prolonged campaign was beginning to tell. His voice was harsh and broken; and he gave unmistakable signs of nervous irritability, brought on by physical ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... house there, and made steps to go down to it: his neighbor, who owned a rocky knoll, built his house at the top, and made stairs to go up to it. Moreover, if the land was a bit in the city, the house was made in the shape of it, and was as likely to have corners in obtuse or acute as in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... ornamented, as were all Egyptian temple-entrances, with the winged sun's disc. Above its widely-opened folding doors arose on either side, tower-like buildings, slender obelisks and waving flags. The front of the temple, rising from the earth in the form of an obtuse angle, had somewhat the appearance of a fortress, and was covered with colored pictures and inscriptions. Through the porch Psamtik passed on into a lofty entrance-chamber, and from thence into the great hall itself, the ceiling ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... justly denominated DEBASED, to distinguish it from the former purer styles. Depressed and nearly flat arched doorways, with shallow mouldings, square-headed windows with perpendicular mullions and obtuse-pointed or round-headed lights, without foliations, together with a general clumsiness of construction, as compared with more ancient edifices, form the predominating features in ecclesiastical buildings of this kind: and in the reign of Charles the First an indiscriminate mixture of ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... Botticelli in the Academy,—"Spring." Here the central female figure, topped by the floating Cupid, is slightly raised above the others, which, however, bend slightly inward, so that a triangle, or pyramid with very obtuse angle at the apex, is suggested; and the whole, which at first glance seems a little scattered, is at once felt, when this is grasped, as closely ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... when they are palpably present broke down between Mary and myself, as it breaks down in a thousand other cases, as it breaks down everywhere. Our social life is honeycombed and rotten with secret hidden relationships. The rigid, the obtuse and the unscrupulously cunning escape; the honest passion sooner or later flares out and destroys.... Here is a difficulty that no bullying imposition of arbitrary rules on the one hand nor any reckless abandonment of law on the other, can solve. Humanity has yet to find ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... a moment on the pavement of the Via Sistina. Her beauty at this moment was of ideal nobility, and shone with additional splendour among all these women heated with the dance, over-excited and restless in their manner. The men looked at her and grew thoughtful; no mind was so obtuse or empty that she did not exercise a disturbing influence upon it, inspire some vague and indefinable hope. He whose heart was free imagined with a thrill what such a woman's love would be; he who loved already conceived ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... laterally, to globular cells, which acquire a comparatively large size. These cells are filled with a protoplasm, to which the plant owes its orange colour. When they have attained their normal dimensions, they elongate at the summit into two, three, or four distinct, thick, obtuse tubes, into which the protoplasm gradually passes. The development of these tubes is unequal and not simultaneous, so that one will often attain its full dimensions, equal, perhaps, to three or four times the diameter of the generative cell, whilst the others are only ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... observed his daughter quizzically. "I did—almost, this time, didn't I?" he bantered. "By the way, who is this wonderful being, this Sidwell, I've heard so much about the last few hours?" He was as obtuse as a post to his wife's meaning look. "Tell me ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... preserved.(2) About the same time, in a public speech, he said he was not going to be "humbugged" by the bogy of secession, and gave his fatuous promise that all the trouble would be ended inside ninety days. For all his brilliancy of a sort, he was spiritually obtuse. On him, as on Douglas, Fate had lavished opportunities to see life as it is, to understand the motives of men; but it could not make him use them. He was incorrigibly cynical. He could not divest himself of the idea that all this confusion ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... The flakes, of course, did not rebound. But they did not come to rest either, not for the most imperceptible fraction of time. As soon as they touched the white, underlying surface, they would start to scud along horizontally at a most amazing speed, forming with their previous path an obtuse angle. So long as I watched the single flake—which is quite a task, especially while driving—it seemed to be in a tremendous hurry. It rushed along very nearly at the speed of the wind, and that was considerable, say between thirty-five ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... scanning theoretically, but the whole rhythm is practically, to the most obtuse ear, would be annihilated by Pope's false quantity, is a blunder which serves to show his utter ignorance of prosody. But, even as a version of the sense, with every allowance for a poet's license of compression and expansion, Pope's translation is defective, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and forgetefull, and by the whiche she becomed spotted and cancred, obtuse, rude et ygnorante, et pourquoy elle deuient ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... pole?—try, now, an' remimber." He illustrated this question by holding up both arms straight above his head to represent the masts of a brig, and sticking his right leg straight out in front of him, to represent the bowsprit; but the woman gazed at him with an air of obtuse gravity that might have damped the hopes even of an Irishman. O'Riley prided himself, however, on not being easily beat, and despite his repeated failures, and the laughter of his messmates, was proceeding to make a third effort, when a loud shout from the cliffs caused the ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... was passing in the mind of Dexter his bride had no knowledge; nor did her keen instincts warn her that the demon of jealousy was already in his heart. Suffering, and the colder spirit of endurance that followed, had rendered her, in a certain sense, obtuse in this direction. ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... Horace was more obtuse. He remained leaning eagerly towards the girl. He extended his hand again, but she repeated, in her soft, deceitful voice, "Yes, a ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was not so obtuse as to be unaware of this, and when he came down she said all he could wish in praise of Madge, but took pains to enlarge upon his own courage. At this he pooh-poohed emphatically. "What was that duck-pond of a lake to a man!" he said. "Madge herself has become ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... of placing pretty Miss Débutante next young Strongboys instead of giving her over into the clutches of old Mr. Boremore will never enter these obtuse entertainers’ heads, any more than that of trying to keep poor, defenceless Mrs. Mouse out ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... forbidden ground. You will find a man, a thoughtless, but quite good-natured man, begin at a dinner-table to relate a succession of stories very much to the prejudice of somebody, while somebody's daughter is sitting opposite him. And you will find the man quite obtuse to all the hints by which the host or hostess tries to stop him, and going on to particulars worse and worse, till, in terror of what all this might grow to, the hostess has to exclaim, "Mr. Smith, you won't take a hint: that is Mr. Somebody's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... cannot sustain. But, I ask, have missionaries no feelings? have their hearts become hard, like blocks of wood and pieces of rock? Does love to Christ, and compassion for the heathen, tend to make men and women obtuse in their feelings, so that a father or mother on heathen ground does not feel as intensely for the present and eternal welfare of a child, as a parent who has never gone to the heathen? Ah! had you seen what my eyes have witnessed, facts then should ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... the quiver broken and decayed, In which are kept our arrows. Rusting there In wild disorder and unfit for use, What wonder if discharged into the world They shame their shooters with a random flight, Their points obtuse and feathers drunk with wine. Well may the Church wage unsuccessful war With such artillery armed. Vice parries wide The undreaded volley with a sword of straw, And stands an impudent and ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... land, and no difficulty should be found in executing its provisions. But while, as aimed against the exercise of arbitrary power, we have no objection to the passage of a declaratory law which shall make plain to every United States judge, and to the most obtuse inspector of election, that women are voters, we still claim that the recent "Act for enforcing the XIV. Amendment" should protect woman in the exercise of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... lagarto, "the lizard''), an animal so closely allied to the crocodile that some naturalists have classed them together as forming one genus. It differs from the true crocodile principally in having the head broader and shorter, and the snout more obtuse; in having the fourth, enlarged tooth of the under jaw received, not into an external notch, but into a pit formed for it within the upper one; in wanting a jagged fringe which appears on the hind legs and feet of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have been, despite her shrewd sense, an obtuse streak in Tilly, else she would never have written that letter. Jane read it twice. The paper rattled in her hands. "Tilly has moved while I was gone," she said; "I never shall live in the block again." She dropped her veil over her face. She sat very ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... fact that there was not also a hole through his head was due to his forethought in having put on a tam-o'-shanter underneath. The net result was a truncated "toorie." Wullie's bullet had struck his helmet at a more obtuse angle, and had glanced off, as the designer of the smooth exterior had intended ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... admits of being split in three directions parallel to two of these opposed faces. Even in such wise, if you will, that all the six faces are equal and similar rhombuses. The figure here added represents a piece of this Crystal. The obtuse angles of all the parallelograms, as C, D, here, are angles of 101 degrees 52 minutes, and consequently the acute angles, such as A and B, are of 78 ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... but to do so, and did not mind doing so. He wanted to publish his new Doctrine of Divorce: was he to go the round of the twelve Reverend Gentlemen who had just been appointed licensers of all books of Theology and Ethics, and wait till he found one of them sufficiently obtuse, or sufficiently asleep, to give his imprimatur to a doctrine so shocking? Clearly, nothing remained but to get any printer to undertake the treatise that would print it in its unlicensed state, the printer trusting the author and both running the risk. Whatever hesitations ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... verse; but all had not sufficient skill for such delicate pastimes. Many contented themselves with copying some of those ready-made ballads, of which professional poets supplied ready-made collections; just as sermons were written for the benefit of obtuse parish priests, under the significant title of "Dormi Secure"[586] (Sleep in peace, tomorrow's sermon is ready). We find also in English manuscripts rubrics like the following: "Loo here begynnethe a Balade whiche that Lydegate wrote at the request of a squyer ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... keep watch and ward, and see that you don't fail the Empire by losing your heart to some fascinating young Rhodesian settler and forget your own South Africa altogether. Dutch Willie is a lot the nicest Dutchman who ever belonged to that obtuse people, and I foresee it will be my lot to guide you to your high destiny on behalf of ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... tree he afforded a fine opportunity for the study of acute and obtuse angles. His neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, back, knees and feet all described angles, and even the toes of his shocking boots deflected from the horizontal ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... understanding of what he has to say concerning the views entertained by his British countryman at large. He has also done with the few specimens which it fell in his way to cite of objections urged against his colleagues in opinion, and which he was obtuse enough to imagine to be no objections at all. He proceeds to his main subject,—the varieties of English ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and the fine fight that human nature was always making against stupendous odds stirred him to a fine and comprehending clarity. He had many faults. He was obstinate, often dull and lethargic, in many ways grossly ill-educated and sometimes wilfully obtuse—but he was a fine friend, a noble enemy, and a chivalrous lover. There was nothing mean nor petty in him, and his views of life and the human soul were wider and more all-embracing than in any Englishman ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... loved the simpleton to mock, To make wise men the idiot play Openly or 'neath decent cloak. Yet sometimes this or that deceit Encountered punishment complete, And sometimes into snares as well Himself just like a greenhorn fell. He could in disputation shine With pungent or obtuse retort, At times to silence would resort, At times talk nonsense with design; Quarrels among young friends he bred And to the ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the Long Red Mangel Wurzel, almost regularly cylindrical, and terminating at the lower extremity in an obtuse cone. It grows much out of ground, the neck or crown is comparatively small, it is rarely forked or deformed by small side roots, and is generally much neater and more regular than the Long Red. Size very large; well-developed specimens ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... a proper discrimination between the various winds, and all the different points of the compass. When properly directed, he was not slow to see, as a mariner, the probable justice of his young Commander's inferences; and then wonder, in its turn began to take possession of his more obtuse faculties. ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... will be twelve miles long, and can be completed within six months after the Act of Parliament is obtained. The gradients are easy, and the curves obtuse. There are no viaducts of any importance, and only four tunnels along the whole length of the line. The shortest of those does not exceed a mile and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... in breadth. But the variations in these respects in the wild rabbit are very slight: whilst in the large lop-eared rabbits they are considerable. Thus in some specimens (B) the oblique terminal knob is developed into a short bar, forming an obtuse angle with the rectangular bar. In another specimen (C) these two unequal bars form nearly a straight line. The apex of the acromion varies much in breadth and sharpness, as may be seen by comparing ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... apparently finished his work. He was sitting back in his chair, contemplating his companion with a little smile. It apparently tickled some obtuse Teutonic sense of humor to see this prince doing work which is usually assigned to clerks—working out statistics and abstruse calculations as to how much food is required to keep ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... sat tailor-fashion, he fairly capsized out of his perch, and toppled down on his nose—a feature, fortunately, so flattened by the hand of nature, that I question if it could have been rendered more obtuse had he fallen out of the maintop on a ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... French critics they seem to have been as obtuse as their German colleagues. To give only one instance: M. Fetis, author of the well-known musical dictionary, states in his article on Chopin, that this composer is overrated to-day, and his popularity largely due to the fact ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... but he was very speedly removed from us, and in his place we had Robert de Poule, a man amiable alike for his rectitude and his attainments. Then came Simon de Poissy, who was a faithful reader, but an obtuse disputator. These two were my teachers ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... assertions pass unexamined, but a more philosophical mind will say to itself, when it comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask Why?' Suppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my quadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of conclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be free from contradictions or not? If I really give my mind to the task, cannot I define a continuous function which is not differentiable? ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... bondage, she would have deemed it unwomanly to make advances by any means other than innuendo, the subtle suggestions which are the instruments of her sex, but which are often too delicate to pierce the understanding of the obtuse ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... himself, the best of his mind and of his creative fancy. He appeared at the same time as a teacher, a prophet of new ideas, and as a poet and artist. But his own countrymen hailed him in the first capacity, remaining for a long time obtuse ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... experience contumeliously scouted, or mendaciously perverted, it is sufficiently obvious that lessons in political economy will, less than from any quarter of the globe, perhaps, be accepted from St Petersburg—they will fall upon unwilling ears—upon understandings obtuse or perverted. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... obtuse," she murmured. "The thing came to me just now as a revelation. Poor, dear man, how you must have suffered. This puts us on a different footing altogether, doesn't it?" "Altogether," ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "I mean a most obtuse and insensible young man, walking by my side, who has learned to interpret Greek and Latin at college, but ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Phoebe, who could not even answer her back when she insulted her, as she frequently did all timid people. Never since that accidental touch of quaintness on the first evening had Ishmael discovered any kindred habit of mind in Phoebe, and she, in her sweetly-obtuse way, sometimes wondered that Ishmael did not want to ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... my meaning, Jack; girls are deuced dull, you know,—I mean obtuse." Miss. Juno flushed. "I wasn't referring to the novel; I was saying that instead of writing my all in a vain effort to revolutionize anything in particular, I'd try to get all the good I could out of the existing ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... sneer, was, for many anxious months, a riddle I could not resolve. Perhaps the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible; or, more possibly, I owed my security to the masterly air of the copyist, who, disdaining the letter (which in a painting is all the obtuse can see) gave but the full spirit of his original for ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... fray the moment his mother was attacked; just as a dog will attack a great beast of prey, so he hung upon the big man's fists, and would not be shaken off. He hated his father, and he longed in his heart to be a policeman when he was grown up. With his blind and obtuse courage he was particularly adapted to such a calling; but he ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... most aristocratic circles. Of course, mistakes were made. People sometimes elbowed their way in who were evidently flaunting weeds among the patrician flowers, and occasionally plain, honest, but somewhat obtuse souls would come as to a Christian church. But people who were "not desirable"—the meaning of this phrase had become well understood in Hillaton—were generally frozen out by an atmosphere made so chilly, even in August, that they were ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... parted quills with their adhering vanes are placed longitudinally at equal distances along the arrow shaft so that their extremities are about 6 centimeters from the butt of the shaft and their webs stand straight out from the surface of the reed, forming equal obtuse angles to one another. These vanes are retained in this position by windings of very light, flexible rattan at their extremities. As a security against slipping or change of relative position, a coating of the above-mentioned ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... are the primary larvae of a parasite proper to a wild, obtuse-tongued, solitary bee, the Colletes, which builds its nest in subterranean galleries. It is their habit to lie in wait for the bee at the approach to these galleries; and then, to the number of three, four, five, or often of more, they will ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking the hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding-place, when the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew she was trespassing, and she ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... whole as good men as I am or better. That shows all the time. You see the sort of man I am. I've a broad streak of personal vanity. I fag easily. I'm short-tempered. I've other things, as you perceive. When I fag I become obtuse, I repeat and bore, I get viciously ill-tempered, I suffer from an intolerable sense of ill usage. Then that ass, Wagstaffe, who ought to be working with me steadily, sees his chance to be pleasantly witty. He gets a laugh round the table at my expense. Young Dent, the ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... the cheap sneers of the obtuse stay-at-home or globe-trotter critics against missionaries and their converts, I am amused. It gives me the measure of the men, particularly of the globetrotters. When the British and American Churches seek to send out missionaries, the British ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... she had kissed Dick flashed across her mind, but in an instant it was gone; and bending her head, she laid her lips to her husband's. It in no way disgusted her to do so; she was glad of the occasion, and was only surprised at the dull and obtuse anxiety she experienced. They then spoke of indifferent things, but the flow of conversation was often interrupted by complimentary phrases. While Ralph discoursed on his mother's nonsense in always dragging religion ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... did. It had to be re-deposited with a sigh. I began to grow despairing. Presently he took up a book and opened it. Was he going to refresh himself with a chapter? His turning over the leaves very slowly gave reason for the suspicion. Or did the obtuse creature expect to find watches and gun-barrels between the leaves? At last he shut the book, and, laying it down, proceeded ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... of conscience when Uriah fell before the besieged city? Surely if he had he would have winced at the obvious parallel of the prophet's story about the ewe lamb. But apparently he remained serenely obtuse till the indignant author's "Thou art the man" unexpectedly nailed him to the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... set forth with unusual energy in the direction I had pointed out. We followed a parallel line to the high flat plateau on the other side of the stream, the slopes of which, in relation to the plain we were standing on, were at an obtuse angle of about 115 deg.. The snow-covered plateau extended from S.W. to N.E. Beyond it to the N. could be seen some high snowy peaks, in all probability the lofty summits S.E. of Gartok. At the point where the Luway joins the other three rivers there is a direct ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... cylindrical, obtuse, with some axillary bristles: radial spines very much crowded, exceedingly numerous, radiant, very slender and bristle-like, white; central spines 6 to 10 and even more, erect and more rigid: flowers pale reddish: ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... and unfathomable are thy mysteries! And why is it that thou permittest the course of true love, like this, so seldom to run smooth, when so many who, uniting through the impulse of sordid passion, sink into a state of obtuse indifference, over which the lights and shadows that touch thee into thy finest perceptions ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... social crisis. A little cat of manifestly humble origin, with only an innate sense of propriety to oppose to a coarse-minded magistrate, and a circle of mocking friends. The judge, imperturbably obtuse, dropped the kitten on the rug, and prepared to resume their former friendly relations. The kitten did not run away, she did not even walk away; that would have been an admission of defeat. She sat down ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... helpless devotion, that would annoy and exasperate him. She saw Nina's near-sighted eyes welling with hurt tears; Nina's check book eagerly surrendered to win from her lord a few delicious hours of the old flattery, the old attention. Harriet fancied Nina, poor, plain, obtuse little Nina, home again: "But you don't know how hard it is, Father. He is never there any more—he hardly ever ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... room, every stained glass window maker, should appreciate one fact: A line which is finished at the top or bottom, or both, with acute angles appears longer than the line that is finished top and bottom with an obtuse or right angle. It is the same with the finish of a ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... hours, in dreams as well as in waking moments, I bad been brooding over the identity of the lady of the ice, and had become convinced that the O'Halloran ladies knew something about it; yet so obtuse was I that I had not suspected that the lady herself might be found in this house. In fact, such an event was at once so romantic and so improbable that it did not even suggest itself. But now here was the lady herself. Here ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... upper wings terminates in a fine point, just as the leaves of many tropical shrubs and trees are pointed, while the lower wings are somewhat more obtuse, and are lengthened out into a short thick tail. Between these two points there runs a dark curved line exactly representing the midrib of a leaf, and from this radiate on each side a few oblique marks which well imitate the lateral veins. These marks are more clearly seen on the outer ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Ruskin,—I believe I shall rather prove in this letter how my head turns round when I write it, than explain why I didn't write it before—and so you will go on to think me the most insusceptible and least grateful of human beings—no small distinction in our bad obtuse world. Yet the truth is—oh, the truth is, that I am deeply grateful to you and have felt to the quick of my heart the meaning and kindness of your words, the worth of your sympathy and praise. One thing especially ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... solicit free discussion Upon all points, no matter what or whose, Because as ages upon ages push on, The last is apt the former to accuse Of pillowing its head on a pincushion, Heedless of pricks because it was obtuse. What was a paradox becomes a truth or A something like it, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Le Mans is in the Hotel de la Prefecture, and as we heard that the famous enamel of Geoffrey Plantagenet, formerly on his tomb in the cathedral, was preserved there, we hastened to behold so interesting a remain of early art. A remarkably obtuse female was the exhibitor on the occasion, and, on my asking her to point out the treasure, she took me to a collection of Roman coins and medals, assuring me they were very old and very curious. It was impossible ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... himself more than a hundred years before. It was an uncouth sort of implement, with a handle of strong black oak, and a short, compact head, square on the one face and oblong on the other. And though it dealt rather an obtuse blow, the temper was excellent, and the haft firmly set; and I went about with it, breaking into all manner of stones, with great perseverance and success. I found, in a large-grained granite, a few sheets of beautiful black mica, that, when split exceedingly thin, and pasted between ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... upon an immense straight-backed chair, with his legs not stretched out, but simply placed upon a stool, formed an angle of the most obtuse form that could ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... playwright's letters to the manager are absolute supplications. Humiliation appears the very discipline of genius. At one time the manuscript was actually recalled by its author and despatched to Garrick. Before it had really come under his consideration, which very likely might have been just as obtuse, Johnson intervened. To send it to Garrick, in his opinion, would be tantamount to an acknowledgment of its refusal by Colman. This had not taken place. The manager would neither accept the piece nor produce it. He said he would keep his faith, but whatever ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... stair, resembling in shape and size a draw-well, the verge of which opened on the threshold of the iron door, showed a descent which seemed to conduct to the infernal regions. The Varangian, however obtuse he might be considered by the quick-witted Greeks, had no difficulty in comprehending that a staircase having such a gloomy appearance, and the access to which was by a portal decorated in such a melancholy style of architecture, could only lead to the dungeons of the imperial palace, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... morally revealed to me—is it not so? Oh, my dear young lady! nothing is more simple. I will explain it to you in two words. The Abbe d'Aigrigny saw in me nothing but a writing-machine, an obtuse, mute, blind instrument—" ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... weight. Their nervous responses, if anything, are a bit duller than those of men; their muscular coordinations are surely no prompter. One finds quite as many obvious botches among them; they have as many bodily blemishes; they are infested by the same microscopic parasites; their senses are as obtuse; their ears stand out as absurdly. Even assuming that their special malaises are wholly offset by the effects of alcoholism in the male, they suffer patently from the same adenoids, gastritis, cholelithiasis, nephritis, tuberculosis, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... with all his might. He was a rude, coarse boy. It was scarcely possible, with his past training, that he should be otherwise. But he was very faithful in fulfilling his obligations. Though his sense of right and wrong was very obtuse, he was still disposed to do the right so far as his uncultivated conscience revealed ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... were in the form of obtuse cones, and were constructed with mud, grass, and herbage. In the formation of them, the alligators had made a kind of floor of these substances, upon the ground; on this they had deposited a layer of eggs, and upon that a stratum of mortar, seven or eight inches in thickness, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... Paris declined to give him information or furnish means, and even said that they did not wish volunteers. All this may readily be explained by the consideration that a man who thereafter proved to be so bitter an enemy was not sufficiently diplomatic to deceive even the obtuse perceptions of so undeserving a body as the author describes said committee. On the other hand, it would have been more prudent for the writer to have said less on this topic, as such hesitation in accepting his services might induce the reader to think that the Poles ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... blood when he was a boy, and had sent him out into the world to fight and jostle men, to win renown, and prove his manhood by risking life and limb in all kinds of mad adventure? Nothing had so moved that self-contained, moody man for years, and even obtuse Tom could see that his story had touched some hidden spring of feeling. The stern lines had relaxed, and there was a softer though more intense light in the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... my touch had grown almost as delicate as that of a blind man; but had it been ever so obtuse, I could have told at that moment, what were the two flat round objects which I held between my fingers. There was no mistaking the "feel" ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... did meekly remind her of her flirtatious preferences for the young beef-witted London chaps, and her incertitude and disdainful capriciousness towards myself, who was not a beetlehead or an obtuse, but a cultivated native gentleman with high-class university degree, and an oratorical flow of language which was infallibly to land me upon the pinnacle of some tip-top judicial preferment in the Calcutta ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... this Moscow official, after a friendly chat, I asked him if he would be a little obtuse arithmetically as to the old and new style of reckoning, and let me have my January "Century" if it arrived before my departure for Petersburg, as my license expired January 1. He smilingly agreed to do so. I also ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... know exactly how you feel," he said dryly. "We should be singularly obtuse if we did not. However, do not for a moment imagine that I am unsympathetic. We all have our prejudices, and the strongest one is a part of us. And for the matter of that, the average American is no more anxious to marry a woman with negro blood in her than ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... which are regarded as appearances of the same "thing" to different people has made it seem as though these "sensibilia" must be regarded as mere subjective phantasms. A given table will present to one man a rectangular appearance, while to another it appears to have two acute angles and two obtuse angles; to one man it appears brown, while to another, towards whom it reflects the light, it appears white and shiny. It is said, not wholly without plausibility, that these different shapes and different colours cannot co-exist simultaneously in the same place, and cannot ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... felt. The roughness of the journey irked David. The toil of the days wore on his nerves. She could see that it pained him to urge the tired animals forward, to lash them up the stream banks and drive them past the springs. And only half understanding his character—fine where she was obtuse, sensitive where she was invulnerable, she felt the continued withdrawal from him, the instinctive shrinking from the man ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... that Lerroux was not only base, but obtuse and absurdly wanting in human feeling and revolutionary sympathy, when he concurred in the execution of the stoker of ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... all its parts covered with hairs, simple and tomentose. Leaves heart-shaped, angular, obtuse, unequally serrate, smooth, soft, the lower surface hoary and bearing 9 well-marked nerves. Petioles longer than the leaves, with 2 stipules at the base. Flowers yellow, axillary, solitary. Peduncles long, with a node near the end. Calyx, 5 sepals, as in all the Malvace. Corolla, 5 petals with ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... to Laura's object in making request for the services of Beppo. She herself knew it to be obvious that she intended to probe and cross-examine the man, and in her wilfulness she chose to be obtuse to opinion. She did not even blush to lean a secret ear above the stairs that she might judge, by the tones of Vittoria's voice upon her giving Beppo the order to wait, whether she was at the same time conveying a hint for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... explanation of his elaborate and difficult plan, Alice made no observation for some time, because even to her faculties, (which were obtuse enough on mechanical matters,) it was abundantly evident that, the boy's hands being tied firmly behind his back, he could neither cut the ropes that ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... drawn attention to a pond that would otherwise have been overlooked and passed by. Cattle are very uncertain in their intelligence. Sometimes oxen go for miles and miles across a country unknown to them, straight to a pond of water; at other times they are most obtuse: Dr. Leichhardt, the Australian traveller, was quite astonished at their ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the adjutant, at last, "you are very new to the Army, and you don't appear to realize all the facilities we have for compelling men to speak. If you remain obtuse any longer, it may be necessary for me to order you to the guard-house ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... seen under the Italian heaven. As to those persons who have pretended to discover that the effects of light and atmosphere were no finer than they found in our own lake scenery, I can only say that they must be exceedingly obtuse in organization,—a defect not ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... said, "they laugh at it because I have to change Vioget's acute and obtuse angles. They call it 'O'Farrell's Swing.' You see, I've had to change the direction of some streets. There are many more now. Eight hundred acres laid out ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... hand, the brown and blue moor stretching before and above us; and on the other hand, below, like a map, the fertile vale lay unrolled, various in colour, according to the crops, divided by enclosures into every angle from most acute to most obtuse. Below was the cultivation of centuries; above, the turnip—the greatest improvement of modern agriculture—flourished, a deep green, under the protection of ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... energy in the direction I had pointed out. We followed a parallel line to the high flat plateau on the other side of the stream, the slopes of which, in relation to the plain we were standing on, were at an obtuse angle of about 115 deg.. The snow-covered plateau extended from S.W. to N.E. Beyond it to the N. could be seen some high snowy peaks, in all probability the lofty summits S.E. of Gartok. At the point where the Luway joins the other three rivers there ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... people on us, and insists that we shall be interested in their story by the skill with which it is told. Mr. Amos Barton, for instance, is as uninteresting a person as can well be imagined: a dull, obtuse curate, whose poverty gives him no fair claim to pity; for he has entered the ministry of the English Church without any particular conviction of its superiority to other religious bodies; without any special ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... soldier accordingly wended on his way, to tell the best story he could to save himself from blame; while Bars, after relocking his empty prison, and barring his door, snuggled himself alongside his partner to busy his rather obtuse brain with schemes of a like ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... land lies untilled the first summer after its being chopped, the following spring shows you a smothering crop of this vile weed. The next plant you notice is the sumach, with its downy stalks, and head of deep crimson velvety flowers, forming an upright obtuse bunch at the extremity of the branches: the leaves turn scarlet towards the latter end of the summer. This shrub, though really very ornamental, is regarded as a great pest in old clearings, where the roots run and send up suckers in abundance. The raspberry and ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... then mid-afternoon, and the prospect of spending another night on the mountains, without food or drink, was not pleasant. So we moved down the ridge. Here another line of marked trees was found, the course of which formed an obtuse angle with the one we had followed. It kept on the top of the ridge for perhaps a mile, when it disappeared, and we were as much adrift as ever. Then one of the party swore an oath, and said he was going out of those woods, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... forenoon, and lingered awhile to see the sports. The greatest peculiarity of the crowd, to my eye, was that they seemed not to have any best clothes, and therefore had put on no holiday suits,—a grimy people, as at all times, heavy, obtuse, with thick beer in their blood. Coarse, rough-complexioned women and girls were intermingled, the girls with no maiden trimness in their attire, large and blowsy. Nobody seemed to have been washed that day. All the enjoyment ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... always be obtuse men in the pastoral office— men who know no way of getting into a sensitive soul except by knocking in the door and walking in with their boots on; but all such men are out of their place. The souls of an average people— tied to the tasks of life, burdened ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... is in the Hotel de la Prefecture, and as we heard that the famous enamel of Geoffrey Plantagenet, formerly on his tomb in the cathedral, was preserved there, we hastened to behold so interesting a remain of early art. A remarkably obtuse female was the exhibitor on the occasion, and, on my asking her to point out the treasure, she took me to a collection of Roman coins and medals, assuring me they were very old and very curious. It was impossible not to agree with her, and to regard these coins with interest, particularly ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... The alteration made obtuse or outside a square, in hewing timber, as opposed to acute, or under-bevelling, which is within ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... scaling, with prominent warty lenticels; shoots short-jointed, angled, with fine scurfy pubescence; diaphragms absent; tendrils intermittent, simple. Leaves small, broadly cordate or roundish; petiolar sinus wide, shallow; margin with obtuse, wide teeth; not lobed; dense in texture, light green color, glabrous above, sometimes pubescent along veins below. Cluster small (6-24 berries), loose; peduncle short; pedicels short, thick. Berries large, globular or somewhat oblate, black or ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... match-maker, and I've no idea that Esther will ever marry George," replied Mrs. Murray with the patience which wives sometimes show to husbands whom they think obtuse. ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... well doubt whether they are the work of nature or art; the figure of the eyes and tongues is very different. Some are elliptic, but, for the greater part round: some represent an hemisphere, others a segment, others an hyperbola. The glossopetrae are naturally of a conic figure, representing acute, obtuse, regular, and irregular cones. They are also of different colours, especially the eyes; for some of them are of an ash-colour, others liver colour, some brown, others blackish; but these, as most rare, are most esteemed. Bracelets are frequently made of them and set in gold: some representing ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... facility, and spread it in a wonderful manner. To produce it they take two pieces of dry soft wood, one is a stick about eight or nine inches long, the other piece is flat: The stick they shape into an obtuse point at one end, and pressing it upon the other, turn it nimbly by holding it between both their hands as we do a chocolate mill, often shifting their hands up, and then moving them down upon it, to increase the pressure ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... lost his audience and his victims had escaped him. Upon the lips of the two unspeakable malefactors dwelt a smile of obtuse tranquillity. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... lightly stretched over the edges of the eyelids, and forms, as it were, a third palpebra of a crescentic shape. The aperture is in consequence rendered somewhat pyriform, the inner curvature being very obtuse, and in some individuals distorted by an angle formed where the fold crosses the border of the lower palpebra. This singularity depends upon the variable form of the orbit during immature age, and is very remarkable in childhood, less so towards adult age, and then, it would seem, frequently ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... more than all unplumb'd, ant. 1. Unscaled, untrodden, is the heart of man. More than all secrets hid, the way it keeps. Nor any of our organs so obtuse, Inaccurate, and frail, As those wherewith we try to ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... much more obtuse than the most of his friends believed, to fail to recognize the invitation in Bridget's demeanour. Although he had not the slightest intention to profit by it, he could not pretend that for ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... within the hour; but that hour of suffering had done me much constitutional mischief. I was stupified as much as if I had committed a debauch upon fat ale. However, I was too angry to complain, or to seek relief from the surgeon. I went on deck at half-past eight, with obtuse faculties and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... or mild steel, will form a ribbon when the tool wedges its way into the material. Cast iron, on the other hand, owing to its brittleness, will break off into small particles, hence the wedge surface can be put at a more obtuse ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... sides exhibited a total extinction of moral principle; the lower were practical atheists. Who can peruse the annals of the emperors without being shocked at the manner in which men died, meeting their fate with the obtuse tranquillity that characterizes beasts? A centurion with a private mandate appears, and forthwith the victim opens his veins and dies in a warm bath. At the best, all that was done was to strike at the tyrant. Men despairingly ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... bar in breadth. But the variations in these respects in the wild rabbit are very slight: whilst in the large lop-eared rabbits they are considerable. Thus in some specimens (B) the oblique terminal knob is developed into a short bar, forming an obtuse angle with the rectangular bar. In another specimen (C) these two unequal bars form nearly a straight line. The apex of the acromion varies much in breadth and sharpness, as may be seen by comparing figures B, C, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... plant of me, who so upliftest thyself that, even as earthly minds see that two obtuse angles are not contained in a triangle, so thou, gazing upon the point to which all times are present, seest contingent things, ere in themselves they are; while I was conjoined with Virgil up over the mountain which cures the souls, and while descending in the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... Barton, there. You have never seen him before. Why, you will invite him out to smoke a cigar with you when the rest of us have gone to bed—you, a mere nobody, and he a man of many millions, a man of power, a man obtuse and stupid like the ox; and he will follow you about, smoking; the cigar, like a little dog, your little dog, trotting at your back. He will not know he is doing it, but he will be doing it just the same. Don't I know, Chris? Oh, I have watched you, watched ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... never sufficiently so as to become visible when the mouth is closed. Nose broad, with widely spreading nostrils when viewed from the front; flat (not pointed or turned up) in profile. Lips diverging at obtuse angles with the septum, and slightly pendulous so as to show a square profile. Length of muzzle to whole head and face as 1 to 3. Circumference of muzzle (measured midway between the eyes and nose) to that of the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... spines, evergreen Holly A D Broad-ovate, one-sided, serrate Linden A D Obovate, oval, lanceolate, oblong Chestnut oaks A D Broad-ovate to broad-elliptical, thorny Thorns A E F Lobes rounded Sassafras A E F Base truncate or heart-shaped Tulip tree A E F Obtuse, rounded lobes White oaks A E F 3-5-lobed, white-tomentose to glabrous beneath White poplar A E G 5-lobed, finely serrate Sweet gum A E G Irregularly 3-7-lobed, serrate-dentate with equal teeth Mulberry ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... "How obtuse you are, step-papa! You are a lunatic; we have the certificates of two physicians to that effect; and that is all the law requires. Now, be ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... not in the habit of taking offence at nothing," replied Frank. "Nay, I can be as purposely obtuse as any one when I choose, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... "I am so obtuse that you will have to explain that statement," she said with assumed carelessness; but Irene was now on guard ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... am or better. That shows all the time. You see the sort of man I am. I've a broad streak of personal vanity. I fag easily. I'm short-tempered. I've other things, as you perceive. When I fag I become obtuse, I repeat and bore, I get viciously ill-tempered, I suffer from an intolerable sense of ill usage. Then that ass, Wagstaffe, who ought to be working with me steadily, sees his chance to be pleasantly witty. He gets a laugh round the table at my ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... appropriated to the lodging of the muleteer, was a triangular garret already described, formed by the ceiling of the upper story and the roof of the house, which rose in an obtuse angle above it. Its greatest elevation was about six feet, and that only in the centre, whence the tiles slanted downwards on either side to the beams by which the floor was supported. The entrance was by a step-ladder, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Witch! Thou growest involved, thy talk diffuse, abstruse and altogether beyond one so obtuse as ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... severe, disapproving. It had a final, fateful sound. He was conscious of a feeling of self-dissatisfaction. In not seeing the political importance of his not being mixed up with this accident, Winthrop had been peculiarly obtuse, and Beatrice, unsympathetic. Until he had cast his vote for ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... lodging, the clock and the hour. Their assertions rested on no base. To liken the happy lucidity and unequalled genius of a Saint Teresa to the extravagances of nymphomaniacs and other mad women were so obtuse, so clumsy, that it could ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... the thought; it would be a shock to their parental feelings that they cannot sustain. But, I ask, have missionaries no feelings? have their hearts become hard, like blocks of wood and pieces of rock? Does love to Christ, and compassion for the heathen, tend to make men and women obtuse in their feelings, so that a father or mother on heathen ground does not feel as intensely for the present and eternal welfare of a child, as a parent who has never gone to the heathen? Ah! had you seen what my eyes have witnessed, facts then ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... that he was made to seem morally obtuse, cut Douglas to the quick. Even upon his tough constitution this prolonged campaign was beginning to tell. His voice was harsh and broken; and he gave unmistakable signs of nervous irritability, brought on by physical fatigue. When he rose to reply to Lincoln, his manner was offensively ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... mimosa trees, to avoid the intense heat of the sun. We gave them from our stock some medicine; and the wretched sufferers seemed to place the utmost confidence in its efficacy. I had often indeed occasion to observe, that however obtuse in some things, the aborigines seemed to entertain a sort of superstitious belief, in the virtues of all kinds of physic. I found that this distressed tribe were also strangers in the land, to which they had ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... the dignity of his office, somewhat in its decorum; his mode of rescuing the oppressed has had too much the character of an escapade. But the more disciplined soldier of the Church would have erred in the opposite direction. The ear which listens only for the voice of authority becomes obtuse to the cry of suffering. The spirit which only moves to command becomes unfit for spontaneous work. Caponsacchi, standing aloof like a man of pleasure, has proved himself the very champion of God, ready to spring ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... under him, as he sat tailor-fashion, he fairly capsized out of his perch, and toppled down on his nose—a feature, fortunately, so flattened by the hand of nature, that I question if it could have been rendered more obtuse had he fallen out of the maintop on a ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... make nooses to catch our happiness. We swear eternal faithfulness, and declare that we desire to pass our lives with them, and seem to await a husband's death impatiently. Let him die, and there are some provincial women obtuse or silly or malicious enough to say: 'Here am I, free at last.' The spent ball suddenly comes to life again, and falls plumb in the midst of our finest triumphs or our most carefully planned happiness. I have seen that you love Beatrix. I leave her therefore in a position where ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... that I loved her! You know that I desire her happiness above all things. Ah, no, for You know that I do not at bottom. I want to hurt, to wound all living creatures, because they know how to be happy, and I do not know how. Ah, God, and why did You decree that I should never be an obtuse and comely animal such as this John Hughes is? I am so tired of being 'the great Mr. Pope,' and I want only the ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Obtuse commentators have said that the Kabalah assigns sexual characteristics to the very Deity. There is no warrant for such an assertion, anywhere in the Sohar or in any commentary upon it. On the contrary, the whole doctrine of the Kabalah ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... unfair advantage. Sufficient unto the day—his present concern was to help her regain a normal mental poise. And to do that he must ignore half of what her suggestions seemed to imply. He felt her breakdown acutely, he must say nothing that would add to her distress of mind. It was better to appear obtuse than to concur too heartily in fears, a recollection of which in a saner moment he knew would be distasteful to her. She would never forgive herself—the less she had to forget the better. She trusted him or she would never have spoken at all. That he knew and he was honoured by ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... mounds, may be easily traced. This object is connected with Madler by what appears to be under a higher sun a bright elbow-shaped marking, in connection with which I have often suspected a delicate cleft. Between the obtuse-angled bend of this object and the W. wall of Madler, two large circular dark spots may be seen under a high sun; and on the surface of the Mare N. of it, a great number of ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... that my touch had grown almost as delicate as that of a blind man; but had it been ever so obtuse, I could have told at that moment, what were the two flat round objects which I held between my fingers. There was no mistaking the "feel" of them. ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... after three years, finding Master Gilbert [de la Porree] I studied Logic and Divinity with him: but he was very speedly removed from us, and in his place we had Robert de Poule, a man amiable alike for his rectitude and his attainments. Then came Simon de Poissy, who was a faithful reader, but an obtuse disputator. These two were my teachers ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... girl was not so obtuse as to be unaware of this, and when he came down she said all he could wish in praise of Madge, but took pains to enlarge upon his own courage. At this he pooh-poohed emphatically. "What was that duck-pond of a lake to a man!" he said. "Madge herself has ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Child?" repeated he, laughing, "why, a Parallelogram or quadrangular Figure, consisting of parallel Lines, with two acute and two obtuse Angles, and formed by two equal and righte Cones, joyned together at their Base! There, are you anie wiser now? No, little Maid, 'tis best for such ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... south aisle and the transept is the Perpendicular Lady Chapel, three bays long from east to west, and two in width towards the south. Its windows are three-lighted. They terminate in the obtuse arches of their time and have their heads filled with tracery. At about half its height each is divided by a transom or horizontal mullion, beneath which the lights have cusped heads. The chapel was originally vaulted, so is well buttressed, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... zeal, my rustic Muse Feels fluttering fain to tell her news, And paint her simple, lowly views With all her art, And, though in genius but obtuse, May touch the heart. ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... weakness of imagination; 4th, in a tolerably thick skin—not literally, for she was fair and blooming, and decidedly handsome, having such a skin as became a young woman of family in northernmost Spain. But her sensibilities were obtuse as regarded some modes of delicacy, some modes of equity, some modes of the world's opinion, and all modes whatever of personal hardship. Lay a stress on that word some—for, as to delicacy, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... think aloud to, and they are, as a stimulant, about the same thing. After Rabourdin had said his say, he observed that Thuillier had not understood him; but he had listened to himself with pleasure, and he was, moreover, grateful for the attention, obtuse as it was, of his hearer, and also for the kindliness of the landlord in ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... at the Eyre Arms; and it was the fascination of his presence which made her answer at random to her cousin's questions about the last volume of the Laureate's, which she had been lately reading. Even Mr. Pallinson, obtuse as he was apt to be when called upon to comprehend any fact derogatory to his own self-esteem, was fain to confess to himself that this evening's efforts were futile, and that this dark-faced stranger was the favourite for those matrimonial stakes he had entered ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... certain extent, religious people; but, though they had done their best to afford me instruction on religious points, I had either paid no attention to what they endeavoured to communicate, or had listened with an ear far too obtuse to derive any benefit. But my mind had now become awakened from the drowsy torpor in which it had lain so long, and the reasoning powers which I possessed were no longer inactive. Hitherto I had entertained ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... common remark that people of brilliant parts often have no objection to relax or REST their understandings in the society of those whose intellects are a little more obtuse. Here was an instance: the gods never made anybody less poetical than Lady Oxford; and yet Lady Mary Wortley, though in general not over tolerant to her inferior's incapacity, appears upon the whole to have loved nobody so well. And there was an exception equally striking in ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... Lipari Islands arrest attention for the volcanic phenomena they present. On one of these is Mount Vulcano, or Volcano, from which all this class of mountains is named. At present the best known of the Lipari volcanoes is Stromboli, which consists of a single mountain, having a very obtuse conical form. It has on one side of it several small craters, of which only one is at present in a ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... (Parkia biglobosa) is a large tree from 35 to 50 feet in height, with a gray bark, many branches, and large, elegant leaves. The latter are compound, bipinnate (Fig. 7), and have fifty pairs of leaflets, which are linear and obtuse and of a grayish green. The inflorescence is very pleasing to the eye. The flowers, say the authors of the Florae Senegambiae Tentamen, form balls of a dazzling red, contracted at the base, and resembling the pompons of our grenadiers (Fig. 8). The support of this latter consists only ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... devil, Holland, don't be so—" he hesitated for the right word, not wishing to be unjust,—"so obtuse. Listen to that wind! It's cold here. Think what it must be in ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... and gave herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have given the world not to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some of it for Tom. Not but that the puff was very nice, for Maggie's palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many times over, sooner than Tom should call her greedy and be cross with her. And he had said he wouldn't have it, and she ate it without thinking; how could she help it? The tears flowed so plentifully that Maggie saw nothing around her ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... it to be done? For three long hours the night after Lord Hartledon's death, she lay awake, thinking out her plans; perhaps for the first time in her life, for obtuse natures do not lie awake. The death had affected her only as regarded her own interests; she could feel for none and regret none in her utter selfishness. One was fallen, but another had risen up. "Le roi ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the least objection to talking about it," said Antonia. "It is one of my failings not to feel delicacy except with regard to art. I can talk to him if you like. I should recommend extreme bluntness. These obtuse people never see things unless they are put right up in ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... calculating the gradients and summit levels as if he were a railway-engineer for the time being—let him observe where the moss lies deep, and precipices rise too steep to be scrambled over; and he will be very obtuse indeed, if he is not able to chalk out for himself precisely the best way to the top. It is a good general rule to keep by the side of a stream. That if you do so when you are at the top of a hill, you will somehow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... at Crompton?" inquired Yorke, mechanically. It would have been plain to any less obtuse observer than his companion that he no longer gave ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... emerged from his own distinct path,—at least, such was his opinion; and being so, he would not be likely to attempt the enforcement of another view of his power on other men. He was afraid of himself now,—afraid that his own preferences had made him obtuse where loyalty would have given him a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... in with all his might. He was a rude, coarse boy. It was scarcely possible, with his past training, that he should be otherwise. But he was very faithful in fulfilling his obligations. Though his sense of right and wrong was very obtuse, he was still disposed to do the right so far as his uncultivated ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... actions, and we are far from denying his right to criticise them; but when he speaks of our private lives, before men of his own faith, and without being under the necessity of adducing a single scrap of evidence, it is plain to the most obtuse intelligence that ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... indignant at this open ridicule of so honest and worthy a fellow as Stackpole, and he wondered whether the Yankee would be obtuse enough not to see it. His doubt was ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... day along one of the glades I have mentioned as dividing the strips of jungle, I was surprised to see a man before me in a field of long stubble, with a cloth spread over his head, and two sticks projecting in front at an obtuse angle to his body, forming horn-like projections, on which the ends of his cloth twisted spirally, were tied. I thought from his curious antics and movements, that he must be mad, but I soon discovered that there was method in his madness. He was ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... fellow?" asked Cap, scarcely knowing how to take the other's manner, which was so dry, while it was so simple, that a less obtuse subject than the old sailor might well have suspected its sincerity. "One who has passed the place knows how to ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... motions and questioning looks, it was evident that the altercation of the evening before was known throughout the town. Observing the direction taken by Van Tricasse, the most obtuse Quiquendonians guessed that the burgomaster was on his way to take some important step. The Custos and Schut affair was talked of everywhere, but the people had not yet come to the point of taking the part of one or the other. The Advocate Schut, having never had occasion to plead in ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... an odd whim of Fate that left the destiny of half the American continent to Don Carlos IV, whom Henry Adams calls "a kind of Spanish George III "—virtuous, to be sure, but heavy, obtuse, inconsequential, and incompetent. With incredible fatuousness the King gave his consent to a bargain by which he was to yield Louisiana in return for Tuscany or other Italian provinces which Bonaparte had just overrun with his armies. "Congratulate me," cried Don Carlos to his Prime ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... conscience when Uriah fell before the besieged city? Surely if he had he would have winced at the obvious parallel of the prophet's story about the ewe lamb. But apparently he remained serenely obtuse till the indignant author's "Thou art the man" unexpectedly nailed him to ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... I had said, eccellenza, that she was heading across toward Ischia," answered Raoul, with an air of obtuse innocence. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of a girl so obtuse that she permits a man like this fat, disgusting actor to dangle about her?" asked Mrs. Crego of her husband, who ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... can not feel at ease until I have given my friendly counsel. Thou art free to follow it or not to follow it. But for the sake of this beard Sheikh Khalid, do not speak at the Mosque to-day. I know the people of this City: they are ignorant, obtuse, fanatical, blind. 'God hath sealed up their hearts and their hearing.' They will not hear thee; they can not understand thee. I know them better than thou: I have lived amongst them for forty years. And what talk have ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Persepolis—the first to be deciphered; which would account for its presence here in a frame. Now this script consists, as you see, of two kinds of characters; the small, solid, acutely pointed characters which are known as wedges, and the larger, more obtuse characters, somewhat like our government broad arrows, and called arrow-heads. The names are rather unfortunate, as both forms are wedge-like and both resemble arrow-heads. The script reads from left to right, like our own writing, and unlike that of the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... at the inquest," resumed the man in the corner, after he had drunk a glass of milk and ordered another, "and I can assure you that the most obtuse person there plainly realized that Mr. Hazeldene was telling a lie. It was pretty plain to the meanest intelligence that the unfortunate lady had not fallen into a state of morbid dejection for nothing, and that perhaps there existed a third person who could throw more light on her strange ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... case, I should hurt his vanity, and do him no good. He would not take my advice. His brother-in-law, Strahan, sent him a subscription of fifty pounds, and said he would send him fifty more, if he would not publish.' GARRICK. 'What! eh! is Strahan a good judge of an Epigram? Is not he rather an OBTUSE man, eh?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, he may not be a judge of an Epigram: but you see he is a judge of what is not an Epigram.' BOSWELL. 'It is easy for you, Mr. Garrick, to talk to an authour as you talked to Elphinston; you, who have been so long the manager of a theatre, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... good-natured man, begin at a dinner-table to relate a succession of stories very much to the prejudice of somebody, while somebody's daughter is sitting opposite him. And you will find the man quite obtuse to all the hints by which the host or hostess tries to stop him, and going on to particulars worse and worse, till, in terror of what all this might grow to, the hostess has to exclaim, "Mr. Smith, you won't take ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... broken and decayed, In which are kept our arrows. Rusting there In wild disorder and unfit for use, What wonder if discharged into the world They shame their shooters with a random flight, Their points obtuse and feathers drunk with wine. Well may the Church wage unsuccessful war With such artillery armed. Vice parries wide The undreaded volley with a sword of straw, And stands ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... eyes fixed upon those of his companion. He distrusted his own powers, as is usual with persons of real merit, but he felt that if he could succeed in making his convictions penetrate his comrade's obtuse mind, their exactitude ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... "Indeed those gentlemen the judges that send you to me might have spared themselves the trouble, for I have more of the obtuse than the acute in me; but repeat the case over again, so that I may understand it, and then perhaps I may be ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 'Yes! I see,' he said. 'How obtuse not to read it in his own manner! How much it explains!' and he silently rested his brow ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this region,—from two to five, and even eight feet in length. Though really a fish, it resembles the eel, but is stouter in its proportions. It is nearly equal in thickness throughout. It has a rude, depressed, and obtuse head, and a compressed tail. So great is the electric power it possesses, that when in full vigour it is able to kill the largest animal, when it can unload its electric organs in a favourable direction. All other fish, knowing by instinct the deadly effects of its stroke, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... will be found in the memoir of her life. In these letters it is apparent that Mr. Lewes wishes Miss Bronte to read and to enjoy Miss Austen's works, as he does himself. Mr. Lewes is disappointed, and felt, doubtless, what all true lovers of Jane Austen have experienced, a surprise to find how obtuse otherwise clever people sometimes are. In this instance, however, we think Mr. Lewes expected what was impossible. Charlotte Bronte could not harmonize with Jane Austen. The luminous and familiar star which comes forth into the quiet evening sky when the sun sets amid the amber light of an autumn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... and winding stair, resembling in shape and size a draw-well, the verge of which opened on the threshold of the iron door, showed a descent which seemed to conduct to the infernal regions. The Varangian, however obtuse he might be considered by the quick-witted Greeks, had no difficulty in comprehending that a staircase having such a gloomy appearance, and the access to which was by a portal decorated in such a melancholy style of architecture, could only lead to the dungeons of the imperial palace, the size ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... a new right flank, to use Scott's expression. Thereupon he extended his two wings as far as he dared, leaving between them a considerable interval, so as to overlap his opponent at either extremity; which done, he threw his left forward. His brigade thus formed an obtuse angle, the apex to the rear, the bullets therefore converging and crossing upon the space in front, into which it and the enemy were moving. In the approach both parties halted several times to fire, and Scott says that the superiority of aim in his ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... friend seemed in search of was that of proportion and coloring; mechanical exactness; a due combination of soft curves and obtuse angles, of warm carnation and marble purity. Such a man, for aught I can see, might love a graven image, like the girl of Florence who pined into a shadow for the Apollo Belvidere, looking coldly on her with stony ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... colour and form brings us to the question of the influences of form on colour. Form alone, even though totally abstract and geometrical, has a power of inner suggestion. A triangle (without the accessory consideration of its being acute-or obtuse-angled or equilateral) has a spiritual value of its own. In connection with other forms, this value may be somewhat modified, but remains in quality the same. The case is similar with a circle, a square, or any conceivable geometrical figure. [Footnote: The angle at which the ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... called the blimbing, and is cultivated to some extent in the East Indies. The fruit is oblong, obtuse-angled, somewhat resembling a short, thick cucumber, with a thin, smooth, green rind, filled with a pleasant, ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... shook her sleek black head with the air of explaining matters to an obtuse child. "I was the only one who understood. Gil misunderstood. He thought that I would really wait for him until he should have made enough money to come home and pay off the mortgage. I let him think so, because ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... tried to direct him but Kennedy appeared unwarrantably obtuse, requiring the doctor to raise the window, and it was some moments before he got his glasses on the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... Red Bloc, the Neutral Bloc and such scraps as had been too obtuse to find themselves a Bloc were drawn into the whirlpool in an amazingly short time, if in a variety of ways. In less than two years the world was rid of most of what ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)
... the baby slumbered and I packed experiment to "Find Period in middle" explained. This was difficult; not that Bess is as a general thing obtuse, but because the picture of Aunt Jane embarking for some wild, lone isle of the Pacific as the head of a treasure-seeking expedition was enough to shake the strongest intellect. And yet, amid the welter of ink and eloquence which filled those fateful pages, there was the cold hard fact confronting ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... had failed to get Jumbo he would have caused his notion of buying the Nelson Monument to be treacherously smuggled into print by some trusty friend, and after he had gotten a few hundred pages of gratuitous advertising out of it, he would have come out with a blundering, obtuse, but warm-hearted letter of apology, and in a postscript to it would have naively proposed to let the Monument go, and take Stonehenge in place of it at the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... scouted, or mendaciously perverted, it is sufficiently obvious that lessons in political economy will, less than from any quarter of the globe, perhaps, be accepted from St Petersburg—they will fall upon unwilling ears—upon understandings obtuse or perverted. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... against slavery and the corvee, she increased steadily the respect in which she was held; but she was considered mad as Gordon. So delighted had Ismail been by a quiet, personal attack she made upon him, that without malice, and with an obtuse and impulsive kindness, he sent her the next morning a young Circassian slave, as a mark of his esteem, begging her through the swelling rhetoric of his messenger to keep the girl, and more than ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... police could readily grasp. No inconsistency about a woman betrayed executing vengeance on her betrayer! Nothing obtuse, or puzzling, or improbable about that! It was not the first time that Britz had encountered such a woman. Convince a woman that her lover means to desert her and she will permit his head to rest unsuspectingly against her cheek, his fingers to entwine themselves ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... made me most unmusical, With feelings that respond not to the call Of stringed harp, or voice—obtuse and mute To hautboy, sackbut, dulcimer, and flute; King David's lyre, that made the madness flee From Saul, had been but a jew's-harp to me: Theorbos, violins, French horns, guitars, Leave in my wounded ears inflicted scars; I hate those trills, and shakes, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... idiots is curiously low; they hardly distinguish between heat and cold, and their sense of pain is so obtuse that some of the more idiotic seem hardly to know what it is. In their dull lives, such pain as can be excited in them may literally be accepted with a welcome surprise. During a visit to Earlswood Asylum I saw two boys whose toe-nails had grown into the flesh and had been excised ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... interior court, but there is not much sculpture therein. One cannot quite forgive the original owner and edifier of the mansion for a bit of ostentation and vulgarity of which he has been guilty. The house has one portion looking on to the square, but at the side bends away at an obtuse angle down the street. As the whole facade was not visible at a single glance, only that portion which was most seen was sculptured, and that with overpowering richness, whereas the other portion in the street was left ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... to social position and the most aristocratic circles. Of course, mistakes were made. People sometimes elbowed their way in who were evidently flaunting weeds among the patrician flowers, and occasionally plain, honest, but somewhat obtuse souls would come as to a Christian church. But people who were "not desirable"—the meaning of this phrase had become well understood in Hillaton—were generally frozen out by an atmosphere made so chilly, even ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... stammering a faint excuse for her slighted task, he said nothing, but slowly lifting up the lid of his desk, he placed his black ruler in a perpendicular position, letting the lid rest upon it, forming an obtuse angle with the desk. Then he piled the books in the back part, leaving a cavity in front, which looked something like a bower in a greenwood, for it was lined ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... in the human mind: it is the tearing asunder of those tender chains that renders slavery the horrible curse that it really is; human beings are reduced to the position of animals, without the blessings enjoyed by the brute creation—short memories and obtuse feelings. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... reply; "a girl of your intellect and refinement can have little in common with, these obtuse village people. They cannot understand your feelings, and you cannot possibly sympathize with theirs. Your former life must have been very different from this. Tell ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... past its feathers, or when the hawk is wheeling about in the air above its head; its faculties then seem to awaken, its blood circulates more freely, a spark of intelligence seems to flash across its usually obtuse brain, and the magnitude of the peril suggests an excellent means of escaping from its enemies. During the daytime, for instance, when, snugly ensconced in its hole, and with its ear close to the ground, the woodcock hears you approach ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... one to the other, and dwelt with them all by turns till she was heart-sick; and tears, tears fell hot on the snow many a time when her eyes had a moment's shield from the doctor and his somewhat more obtuse coadjutor. She felt half superstitiously, as if with her taking the farm were beginning the last stage of their falling prospects, which would leave them with none of hope's colouring. Not that in the least ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... angle of 72 deg. which they originally form with the lateral edge of the rhombohedron is reduced to 68 deg.. The prism is then cut in two in a plane perpendicular to the new end surfaces, the section being carried obliquely from one obtuse corner of the prism to the other, in the direction of its length. The surfaces of this section, after having been carefully polished, are cemented together again by means of Canada balsam. A ray of light, on entering the prism, is separated by the double refraction of the calc-spar ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... lack of thought and observation, and yet he could not understand why she should hesitate to ask for money. "Why, it is all yours, dear," he said. "You were only asking for what already belongs to you." And many young husbands are just as obtuse, therefore they should receive in advance the instruction that is needed to prevent a possibility of such neglect. Have it understood that if you are worthy to be trusted as a bearer of the name and a sharer of the fortunes of a man, you are ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... sufficient skill for such delicate pastimes. Many contented themselves with copying some of those ready-made ballads, of which professional poets supplied ready-made collections; just as sermons were written for the benefit of obtuse parish priests, under the significant title of "Dormi Secure"[586] (Sleep in peace, tomorrow's sermon is ready). We find also in English manuscripts rubrics like the following: "Loo here begynnethe a Balade whiche that Lydegate wrote at the request of a squyer yt served in Love's ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... coffee-plantation, of Don Juan Torres, distant a league from the village, over which league of stone, sand, and rut you rumble in a volante dragged by three horses. You know that the volante cannot upset; nevertheless you experience some anxious moments when it leans at an obtuse angle, one wheel in air, one sticking in a hole, the horses balking and kicking, and the postilion swearing his best. But it is written, the volante shall not upset,—and so it does not. Long before you see the entrance to the plantation, you watch the tall palms, planted in a line, that shield, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... he exclaimed. "I don't know whether you're the most cynical young man I ever met, or whether you're the most obtuse—" ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... a faint shake of his head at the floor abandoned the thankless task of giving hints to a young man who was too obtuse to see them; and it was not until some time later that Mr. Hardy, sorely against his inclinations, gave his host a hearty handshake and, with a respectful bow to Miss ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... to listen but with so bristling an expression that it was clear no explanation could satisfy him. Dick, however, took no heed of that. He spoke slowly as one lecturing to an obtuse class of scholars. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... not be supposed that the thousand-odd persons who composed this remarkable ship's company were so hard-hearted, so selfish, so forgetful, so morally obtuse, that they never thought of the real horror of their situation, and of the awful calamity that had overwhelmed so many millions of their fellow-creatures. They thought of all that only too seriously ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... can be learned in the flower, and the associations thus indelibly impressed cannot fail to leave at least a trace of fragrance and loveliness on even an obtuse nature. No matter what the later experiences or mistakes may be, the whole conception of this side of life cannot sink so low as might be the case if there were not this flower-sweet background. And that is ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... speech was meant to make peace; but Molly was in twenty minds as to whether she should accept the olive-branch or not. Her temper, however, was of that obtuse kind which is not easily ruffled; her mind, stagnant in itself, enjoyed excitement from without; and her appetite was invariably good, so she stayed, in spite of the inevitable tete-a-tete with Alice. The latter, however, refused to be drawn into conversation ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Rome that, three years later, I heard of her death. The notice said "suddenly"; I was glad of that. I was glad too—basely perhaps—to be away from Grancy at a time when silence must have seemed obtuse ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... philosophical mind will say to itself, when it comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask Why?' Suppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my quadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of conclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be free from contradictions or not? If I really give my mind to the task, cannot I define a continuous function which is not differentiable? The raising of the first question ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... is headed, 'To develop the idea of straight lines.' First, would not the idea of a straight line come nearer to the thing actually had in view? Again, 'To develop the idea of right, acute, and obtuse angles.' 'The idea,' taking in all these things, must be most mixed and multifarious; it could not be clear, though that is a quality mainly to be sought. Is not the intention rather, to develop ideas of the right, the acute, and the obtuse ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... to globular cells, which acquire a comparatively large size. These cells are filled with a protoplasm, to which the plant owes its orange colour. When they have attained their normal dimensions, they elongate at the summit into two, three, or four distinct, thick, obtuse tubes, into which the protoplasm gradually passes. The development of these tubes is unequal and not simultaneous, so that one will often attain its full dimensions, equal, perhaps, to three or four times the diameter ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... issue of April 6th concerning the possibility of a crisis in Anglo-Armenian relations. The incident of the Bobadig mules is already bearing fruit, and we can no longer doubt that popular feeling in the vilayet of Arimabug has been dangerously inflamed by the obtuse procrastination of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... in this letter how my head turns round when I write it, than explain why I didn't write it before—and so you will go on to think me the most insusceptible and least grateful of human beings—no small distinction in our bad obtuse world. Yet the truth is—oh, the truth is, that I am deeply grateful to you and have felt to the quick of my heart the meaning and kindness of your words, the worth of your sympathy and praise. One thing especially which you ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Mr. Kendal, 'that unless your commission emulated of Albinia and Dusautoy they would have little perception of the evils. Our local authorities are obtuse in such matters.' ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in halting and hesitating fashion, publicly asking the National Volunteers to stay at home, and again made half-hearted speeches in favour of recruiting. Mr Redmond's supporters in Cork were not, however, as politically obtuse as he appeared to be, or perhaps as his associations with Mr Dillon compelled him to be. Through the writer they asked Mr O'Brien to set forth a plan of united action. Mr O'Brien did so in a memorandum which suggested that Mr Redmond should take the initiative ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... prevent the American cannon from bearing on these breastworks, he felled trees and bush, covering a large stretch of ground with obstructions in the front. The breastwork on the front-line formed an obtuse angle at the right of the road, and extended along the curves of the ravine. The Colonel then sent forward to a spot some distance in advance of the front-line a party of Beauharnois' axemen, well accustomed to felling trees, who destroyed the bridges and obstructed ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... the elbow was growing obtuse as the shadowy arm straightened itself. Thirty seconds more! I began to count, and, gripping my staff, braced myself for what might be, when —with a sudden cry, Charmian sprang forward, and, hurling herself against the door, shut it ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... a true prophet. Mr John Feversham was so obtuse, so unreasonable, so unpardonably preposterous, as to imagine it possible that Blanche Enville might yet marry him, though he had the prospect of a curacy, and had not ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... precise time is inexplicable, but there is no mystery in my leaving Chicago. My future sister-in-law bluntly informed me that my absence from the city would greatly facilitate the necessary dressmaking. Although an obtuse person in some ways, I know when I am bumped. Three days after Fuller's luncheon to Howells, I reached the town of Gallup, which is the point of departure for the Navajo Agency, some twenty-five or thirty miles north of the ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... in a circle: mamma is at her side of the fire, papa at his; Mademoiselle Eleonore, at whom the Captain looks rather sweetly (eyes off, Captain!); the two girls, listening like—like nymphas discentes to Apollo, let us say; and John and Tummas (with obtuse ears), who are bringing in the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... woman, who expected to draw her uncle into a matrimonial discussion by an argument ad omnipotentem, was stupefied; but persons of obtuse mind have the terrible logic of children, which consists in turning from answer to question,—a logic ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... FISHES are well calculated to excite our amazement; for, in some cases, these are situated in the jaws, sometimes on the tongue or palate, and sometimes even in the throat. They are in general sharp-pointed and immovable; but in the carp they are obtuse, and in the pike so easily moved as to seem to have no deeper hold than such as the mere skin can afford. In the herring, the tongue is set with teeth, to enable it the better, it is supposed, to ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... a mocking laugh that sent a shivering through the frame of Cuchillo. "Well, well! friend Cuchillo, your youth promised better than this. If your conscience is as callous as your perspicacity is obtuse—which God forbid—it is not likely ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... A little cat of manifestly humble origin, with only an innate sense of propriety to oppose to a coarse-minded magistrate, and a circle of mocking friends. The judge, imperturbably obtuse, dropped the kitten on the rug, and prepared to resume their former friendly relations. The kitten did not run away, she did not even walk away; that would have been an admission of defeat. She sat down very slowly, as if first searching for a particular spot in the intricate pattern of the rug, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
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